mgoblog - Indianahttp://mgoblog.com/taxonomy/term/4632/0
enMich to be seeded above Minny after Badgers beat Gophershttp://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/mich-be-seeded-above-minny-after-badgers-beat-gophers
<p>EDIT: Original title was <strong>Michigan certain 9-seed in BTT after Wiscy beats Minny</strong>, but I didn&#39;t notice Northwestern one game behind us also at 6-11. <strong>Derp</strong></p>
<p>Of course, Indiana and Illinois are out of reach.</p>
<p>Michigan will be seeded above Minnesota since</p>
<ul>
<li>
After the loss to Wisc tonight, Minn can at best tie us&nbsp;</li>
<li>
We beat Minny in the only meeting this yr</li>
</ul>
<p>To grab the 9th seed from us, NW needs</p>
<ul>
<li>
to win @Iowa</li>
<li>
for Michigan to lose at home to Rutgers</li>
<li>
for Ohio State to lose at home to Wiscy</li>
</ul>
<p>Let&#39;s go through the tiebreakers</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/111214aaa.html" target="_blank">http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/111214aaa.html</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<ol>
<li>
Head-to-head
<ol>
<li>
Results (Mich 1, NW 1; Mich 1, Minn 0; NW 1, Minn 0)</li>
<li>
In case it&#39;s a three way tie, Minny drops out here</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>
Records against individual teams in order of standings
<ol>
<li>
Group tied teams together as single group</li>
<li>
Sudden death, first advantage found wins</li>
<li>
Results
<ol>
<li>
No wins for either Mich/NW vs Wiscy</li>
<li>
No wins for either Mich/NW vs&nbsp;MD</li>
<li>
Wins against the four tied 11-6 teams
<ol>
<li>
MSU (no wins for either)</li>
<li>
Purdue (no wins for either)</li>
<li>
OSU (Mich 1-1, NW 0-1)</li>
<li>
Iowa (Mich 0-1, NW 2-0)
<ol>
<li>
Note both Iowa &amp; OSU</li>
<li>
lose to NW &amp; Wiscy</li>
<li>
this weekend</li>
<li>
by definition of the scenario</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
<li>
Consequence (NW 9th Seed, Mich 10th)
<ol>
<li>
Group OSU &amp; Iowa together</li>
<li>
Results (Mich 1-2, NW 2-1)</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ol>
<p>So the likelihood has increased (derp) that we will be the 9th seed in the Big Ten Tournament and will start play on the 2nd day on Thursday, March 12 against either Indiana (if Illinois wins @Purdue &amp; Indiana loses at home vs MSU) or Illinois (the other three combinations of Indiana/Illinois wins/losses).</p>
<p>With its win tonight, Wiscy clinches the Big Ten regular season title and will be seeded first. &nbsp;The winner of the 8/9 game plays the 1-seed on the third day of the tournament in the quarterfinals. &nbsp;Thus, should we win our opening game, we likely will be facing Wisconsin in our second game.</p>
<div class="mod-header stathead">
<h4>
2014-15 Big Ten STANDINGS</h4>
</div>
<div class="mod-content">
<table class="mod-data">
<tr>
<th scope="col">
TEAM</th>
<th class="textright" scope="col">
CONF</th>
<th class="textright" scope="col">
GB</th>
<th class="textright" scope="col">
OVR</th>
</tr>
<tbody>
<tr class="even team-41-275 highlight">
<td>
#6 <a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/275/wisconsin-badgers">Wisconsin</a></td>
<td class="textright">
15-2</td>
<td class="textright">
--</td>
<td class="textright">
27-3</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd team-41-120">
<td>
#10 <a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/120/maryland-terrapins">Maryland</a></td>
<td class="textright">
13-4</td>
<td class="textright">
2</td>
<td class="textright">
25-5</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even team-41-194">
<td>
#23 <a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/194/ohio-state-buckeyes">Ohio State</a></td>
<td class="textright">
11-6</td>
<td class="textright">
4</td>
<td class="textright">
22-8</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd team-41-127">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/127/michigan-st-spartans">Michigan St</a></td>
<td class="textright">
11-6</td>
<td class="textright">
4</td>
<td class="textright">
20-10</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even team-41-2294">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/2294/iowa-hawkeyes">Iowa</a></td>
<td class="textright">
11-6</td>
<td class="textright">
4</td>
<td class="textright">
20-10</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd team-41-2509">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/2509/purdue-boilermakers">Purdue</a></td>
<td class="textright">
11-6</td>
<td class="textright">
4</td>
<td class="textright">
19-11</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even team-41-84">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/84/indiana-hoosiers">Indiana</a></td>
<td class="textright">
9-8</td>
<td class="textright">
6</td>
<td class="textright">
19-11</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd team-41-356">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/356/illinois-fighting-illini">Illinois</a></td>
<td class="textright">
9-8</td>
<td class="textright">
6</td>
<td class="textright">
19-11</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even team-41-130">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/130/michigan-wolverines">Michigan</a></td>
<td class="textright">
7-10</td>
<td class="textright">
8</td>
<td class="textright">
14-15</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd team-41-135">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/135/minnesota-golden-gophers">Minnesota</a></td>
<td class="textright">
6-11</td>
<td class="textright">
9</td>
<td class="textright">
17-13</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even team-41-77">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/77/northwestern-wildcats">Northwestern</a></td>
<td class="textright">
6-11</td>
<td class="textright">
9</td>
<td class="textright">
15-15</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd team-41-158">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/158/nebraska-cornhuskers">Nebraska</a></td>
<td class="textright">
5-12</td>
<td class="textright">
10</td>
<td class="textright">
13-16</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even team-41-213">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/213/penn-state-nittany-lions">Penn State</a></td>
<td class="textright">
3-14</td>
<td class="textright">
12</td>
<td class="textright">
15-15</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd team-41-164">
<td>
<a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/164/rutgers-scarlet-knights">Rutgers</a></td>
<td class="textright">
2-15</td>
<td class="textright">
13</td>
<td class="textright">
10-20</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h1>
Who would you rather face in the opener?</h1>
<p><a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/84/indiana-hoosiers" target="_blank">http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/84/indiana-hoosiers</a></p>
<p><a href="http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/356/illinois-fighting-illini" target="_blank">http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/team/_/id/356/illinois-fighting-illini</a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/mich-be-seeded-above-minny-after-badgers-beat-gophers#commentsMGoBoard2015 Big Ten TournamentbasketballIllinoisIndianawisconsinFri, 06 Mar 2015 06:52:59 +0000Muttley95884 at http://mgoblog.comIU Stealing Defensive Signals?http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/iu-stealing-defensive-signals
<p>Angelique Chengelis <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/2014/11/03/um-combat-sign-stealers/18443955/"><u><strong>REPORTS</strong></u></a> that Coach Mattison believes that IU was using spotters to steal Michigan&#39;s defensive signals to gain an unfair advantage.&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote>
&quot;You know what they do? They get up above (in the press box), and they watch you signal, and then when they see you signal, they call on their headset from upstairs over to the other sideline and they tell them what you&#39;re going to run.</blockquote>
<p>My understanding is that this is not currently against the NCAA rules unless you deploy an extra coach or assistant (beyond allowable amounts) to do the sign stealing.&nbsp; If that&#39;s right, do the football experts and others here think we should be doing this - or is it too much of a distraction?&nbsp;</p>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/iu-stealing-defensive-signals#commentsMGoBoardfootballIndianaMattisonWhat is cheating anyway?Tue, 04 Nov 2014 14:40:45 +0000Everyone Murders91726 at http://mgoblog.comBest and Worst: Indianahttp://mgoblog.com/diaries/best-and-worst-indiana-0
<p><em>This is going to be an abbreviated Best and Worst. &nbsp;First off, I&#39;ve just survived a weekend of family celebrating both my wife&#39;s and my daughter&#39;s birthdays, so I finished watching the DVR of the game about an hour ago. &nbsp;Plus, I&#39;m dying right now of a sinus headache, the type that makes you wonder just how bad the longer-term damage would be to drill a teeny-weeny hole in your skull to release the pressure. &nbsp;Plus, it&#39;s IU, Michigan is 4-5, and they just fired Dave Brandon and Brady Hoke is pretty much doomed to follow. &nbsp;What happened on the field isn&#39;t really important.</em></p>
<p><strong>Best: &nbsp;Michigan Won! &nbsp;And, Like, By A Lot of Points!! &nbsp;More Than the Spread!!!</strong> <strong><img alt="" height="201" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/15c284cd8d46bdaanotes/mix_celebration.gif" width="300" /></strong></p>
<p>By my own back-of-an-envelope calculations, this is the first time Michigan has done that to a Power 5 team since the Truman administration. &nbsp;That&#39;s the Marshall Plan for ya!</p>
<p>The game was never really in doubt when it became clear Indiana wasn&#39;t going to throw the ball forward, and with a 17-0 lead going into the half it was kinda, what&#39;s the word, &quot;relaxing&quot; to be watching a Michigan football game. &nbsp;For future reference, I want to feel this way again sooner rather than later.</p>
<p><strong>Worst: &nbsp;The Part Where I Kinda Defend Dave Brandon</strong></p>
<p>So yeah, something else happened in conjunction with this game.</p>
<p>The big news at the end of the week was David Brandon&#39;s resignation/peaceful surrender/It&#39;s not me, it&#39;s you as athletic director at the University of Michigan. &nbsp;Obviously, this comes as a shock to everyone.</p>
<p><img alt="" height="225" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/15c284cd8d46bdaanotes/catspace.gif" width="300" /></p>
<p>What was a bit surprising was the speediness in which the change was made; while I doubt the two are related, within a week of MGoBlog&#39;s release of Dave Brandon&#39;s Live Journal-esque email screeds, the pizza baron was out of office and early reports have them looking hard at <a href="http://espn.go.com/college-sports/story/_/id/11800945/michigan-targets-northwestern-ad-jim-phillips">Jim Phillips at Northwestern</a>&nbsp;amongst other targets,&nbsp;which seems to be a departure of sorts from the &quot;Michigan Man&quot; ties that drove previous searches and comprised the initial &quot;wish lists&quot; for Brandon&#39;s replacement. &nbsp;This is good for the University and, frankly, for Brandon; I certainly don&#39;t want to work at a place where a large number of people actively despise me, and I&#39;m sure he&#39;ll rest easy on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO0JaecRWy0">his pile of money, with many beautiful ladies</a>.</p>
<p>But as (apparently) one of the resident contrarians/apologists for Dave Brandon as AD, I don&#39;t take much joy in his firing. &nbsp;He needed to go because he failed the most basic tenet of being an athletic directory, the same rule that offensive linemen are told: &nbsp;keep your name out of the newspapers. &nbsp;If you are doing your job well, nobody should be talking about you until the end of the year when you collecting your team awards and QBs are talking about how they owe you a steak dinner and a nice watch after the Pro Bowl.</p>
<p>Dave Brandon the man became a PR circus, mishandling so many public elements of his job that it almost felt like he was doing it on purpose. &nbsp;He kept trumpeting &quot;dynamic pricing&quot; of tickets while outright lying about attendance figures, he helped whittle away Michigan&#39;s voluminous waitlist by driving away large swaths of diehards with seat &quot;donations&quot; and screwy point systems, he messed around with gameday traditions and neutered the band in favor of Special K rocking the Big House with some of your favorite <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIB9Y4OFPs"><em>Deja Vu</em></a> jams, and always, ALWAYS doubled down on bad decisions with condescension and general assholeness. &nbsp;In particular, his handling of the football team and it struggles, highlighted this year by Morris&#39;s concussion fiasco and the rally, destroyed whatever residual goodwill he still had with most fans.</p>
<p>Still, what continues to bother me about the discussion surrounding his firing is the pervasive argument that Brandon&#39;s tenure was not beneficial to Michigan athletics in general, which I&#39;m not sure is (a) true, (b) measurable, and (c) relevant to his firing. &nbsp;As I stated earlier, Brandon had to go because he kept screwing up publicly and the cash cow was hemorrhaging support and money.</p>
<p>Measuring Brandon&#39;s tenure as it relates to other sports is difficult because so many factors are legitimately beyond his control and/or difficult to quantify. &nbsp;Brian tweeted the following:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>
BTN discussing how awesome Brandon&#39;s done with other sports. Top 5 Directors Cup finishes, 1999-2009: 10. Since: 1. &mdash; mgoblog (@mgoblog) <a href="https://twitter.com/mgoblog/status/528237339332456449">October 31, 2014</a></p></blockquote>
<p>The argument being made was that before Brandon arrived, Michigan was an elite athletic institution across a variety of sports; it wasn&#39;t just a &quot;football factory&quot; that failed to live up the dual ideals of amateurism and Title IX equality. &nbsp;Yet once his MBA-fueled policies took hold and he started to replace the institutional memory of the athletic department, the other non-revenue sports were marginalized and suffered.</p>
<p>First off, I question the premise that the Directors Cup is a good barometer of an athletic department&#39;s overall health and well-being. &nbsp;When Stanford is riding a John Wooden-esque <a href="http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nacda/sports/directorscup/auto_pdf/2013-14/misc_non_event/June27release.pdf">19-straight titles</a>&nbsp;because they are really good at golf and water polo while sports like basketball, hockey, and wrestling are ignored, you have to wonder a bit about the system&#39;s efficacy.</p>
<p>So I went through and compiled a list of Michigan&#39;s finishes in the final standings since 1999, with the highest-scoring sport included.</p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<th>
Year</th>
<th>
Ranking</th>
<th>
Highest-scoring Sport</th>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;1999</td>
<td>
6</td>
<td>
&nbsp;W. Rowing</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
&nbsp;2000</td>
<td>
3</td>
<td>
&nbsp;W. Rowing</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;2001</td>
<td>
4</td>
<td>
&nbsp;W. Rowing</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
&nbsp;2002</td>
<td>
6</td>
<td>
&nbsp;Softball</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;2003</td>
<td>
4</td>
<td>
&nbsp;W. Rowing</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
&nbsp;2004</td>
<td>
2</td>
<td>
&nbsp;W. Rowing</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;2005</td>
<td>
4</td>
<td>
&nbsp;Softball</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
&nbsp;2006</td>
<td>
&nbsp;24</td>
<td>
&nbsp;Softball</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;2007</td>
<td>
4</td>
<td>
&nbsp;W T&amp;F</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
&nbsp;2008</td>
<td>
3</td>
<td>
Hockey/W. T&amp;F</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;2009</td>
<td>
5</td>
<td>
M. Golf/W. Water Polo</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
&nbsp;2010</td>
<td>
25</td>
<td>
W. Water Polo</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;2011</td>
<td>
15</td>
<td>
M. Golf</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
&nbsp;2012</td>
<td>
10</td>
<td>
W. Rowing</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
&nbsp;2013</td>
<td>
4</td>
<td>
Softball</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>So what I see is a school that was pretty good at Women&#39;s Rowing and Softball in the early 2000&#39;s, consistently finishing in the top 10 with one outlier in 2006. &nbsp;Then the year he took over, the school suffered through a pretty terrible run at the selected sports (a dip highly unlikely to have been affected by Brandon&#39;s nascent hiring), and has since trended upwards, reaching #4 despite their national championships in Men&#39;s swimming &amp; diving and gymnastics not counting in the final tally. &nbsp; Rankings aren&#39;t complete for 2014, so there might be some softening. &nbsp;Still, if you read the chart it sure looks like Brandon stepped into a leaky ship and helped plug the holes, though not being deeply knowledgeable of the various other sports at UM, I can&#39;t say for sure.</p>
<p>And on an interesting sidenote, here is a breakdown of the national championships Michigan has claimed over the same span, broken up by BD (Before Brandon) and AD (After Brandon)</p>
<p>Number of National Championships from 1999-2009: &nbsp;3</p>
<p>M Gymnastics: &nbsp;1999</p>
<p>Field Hockey: &nbsp;2001</p>
<p>Softball: 2005</p>
<p>Number of National Championships from 2010-2014: 4</p>
<p>M. Gymnastics: 2010, 2013, 2014</p>
<p>M. Swimming and Diving: &nbsp;2013</p>
<p>My point isn&#39;t to make an argument that Brandon should have been retained because the gymnastics team suddenly got better, only to argue that Dave Brandon&#39;s official job was to be the Athletic Director for the ENTIRE University, and on paper it looks like he wasn&#39;t doing a half-bad job. &nbsp;The basketball team had just suffered through a 15-17 season after a promising return to the tournament in 2009-2010, and there were rumbling that Brandon might need to remove Beilein and go select one of &quot;his&quot; guys. &nbsp;Yet he stuck with a guy he inherited from the last administration, helped to improve facilities, and now Michigan is one of the most consistent basketball programs in the country. &nbsp;Conversely, the hockey team has gone into a talespin recently under Red, and yet it doesn&#39;t appear Brandon put much pressure on Berenson to turn the ship around or ship out.</p>
<p>Maybe with Brandon gone we&#39;ll hear from the other programs about his tenure from their perspective; my guess is that most will say he was fine to work with, gave them the resources they needed to be successful, and mostly stayed out of the way. &nbsp;We keep hearing condemnations from &quot;<a href="http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/road-saturday/201410/michigan-wolverines-football-dave-brandon-brady-hoke-mark-schlissel-regent">friends of John Bacon</a>&quot; that Michigan&#39;s financials were in shambles and Brandon should be fired for that, and yet the Michigan brand is, by virtually any metric, still one of the <a href="http://www.therichest.com/sports/top-10-high-revenue-college-sports-programs/8/">most marketable and profitable out there</a>, doubly impressive because of the state&#39;s meager economic assistance and the poor performance of the football team in years past. &nbsp;Making money is a major part of an AD&#39;s responsibility, and the guy who takes over for Brandon is probably continue a number of his policies, though probably with less fanfare. &nbsp;It isn&#39;t breaking news that college sports are &quot;big business&quot;, and anyone expecting the next AD to be a radical departure from this core outlook is probably going to be disappointed.</p>
<p>So I guess my point is that Dave Brandon had to be fired because he had a number of very public flameouts, and when people are marching on your boss&#39;s lawn calling for your head it&#39;s time to pack up the framed footballs and retire to your floating island or wherever guys like Brandon hang out. &nbsp;But I don&#39;t know if he was a bad athletic director in totality, and the fact that doesn&#39;t matter in the final calculus of his firing shouldn&#39;t invalidate the positives he did at UM.</p>
<p><strong>Best: &nbsp;The Gooch</strong></p>
<p>Back to football, Indiana has a freshmen linebacker on their team called <a href="http://www.iuhoosiers.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/greg_gooch_912320.html">Greg Gooch</a>. &nbsp; He didn&#39;t seem to chart, but I couldn&#39;t help seeing his name without remembering one of my favorite part-time characters on <em>Scrubs</em>.</p>
<p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/5xP6TAvYvno" width="560"></iframe><br />
<strong>Worst: &nbsp;The Offense is Still Broken</strong></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Yes, Michigan just put up 404 yards on Indiana, and recorded both their first 200-yard passing game of the year (!) and first 100-yard rusher game in the B1G since the <a href="http://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/players/fitzgerald-toussaint-1/gamelog/2013/">last time UM played IU</a> (!!), but man is it hard to get excited. &nbsp;For one thing, Indiana has a turrible defense that gives up huge plays to everyone, yet Michigan&#39;s longest play was a 34-yard strike to Darboh that featured Gardner having to bypass the rush, step into a lane, stutter-step about a million times, and still have to throw a tight throw to Amara as he finally shook off the IU defensive back. &nbsp;It was a good play and helped get Michigan in position for an opening score, but Jeremy Gallon had 369 yards receiving on his own last year against effectively the same IU defense, including multiple 50+ yard receptions. &nbsp;It remains an offense bereft of &quot;playmakers&quot;, which I know is absolutely the most cliche thing to say but is kinda true.</p>
<p>If you look the offensive drive efficiency for <a href="http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/drivestatsoff2013">NFL offenses</a>, you see that the best teams score quickly and with (relatively) few plays. &nbsp;It makes sense intuitively, as dinking-and-dunking your way down the field requires your offense to execute multiple times successfully, which as anyone with a basic understanding of probability knows that success rates tend to go down the more times you tempt fate. &nbsp;Looking at Michigan&#39;s first couple of meaningful drives, you see these long 8+ play drives that are littered with short gains and the occasional long-ish run or completion but nothing really explosive. &nbsp;It worked because it was Indiana and Drake Johnson had a career game (more on that later), but when your longest plays of the year so far are 62-yard and 61-yard runs by Green and Smith against App. St. to start the season, and your future 1st-round WR has a season long of 43 yards on an ill-timed bomb that probably should have been picked off by the PSU safety, you can&#39;t read TOO deep into a semi-breakout day. &nbsp;Last year&#39;s offense was way more boom-or-bust, but this year&#39;s &quot;consistent muck&quot; probably wasn&#39;t what everyone hoped for when Michigan made a change at offensive coordinator.</p>
<p><strong>Meh: &nbsp;Gardner, Again</strong> <img alt="" height="225" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/15c284cd8d46bdaanotes/say_when.gif" width="400" /></p>
<p>Just copy-paste one of my sections about Gardner from any diary this year. &nbsp;Nothing has changed. &nbsp;He&#39;s broken, not in a way that can&#39;t be fixed, but in a way that nobody at Michigan, in the next 4 games, is going to come close to accomplishing. &nbsp;Sadly, he&#39;d be the perfect QB for an Urban Meyer or a Chip Kelly offense, a guy who can outrun most defenders and throw the ball effectively enough to keep them honest. &nbsp;He&#39;s a sunk cost, a broken wagon wheel dipped in dysentery on the Oregon Trail of 2014 Michigan football.</p>
<p><strong>Best(?): &nbsp;Disney&#39;s <em>The&nbsp;Drake Johnson</em><em> Story</em></strong> <img alt="" height="226" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/15c284cd8d46bdaanotes/disney_goofy_football.png" width="400" /></p>
<p>First off, that was a legit good performance by Johnson, even with the opponent factored in. &nbsp;He looked confident, made decisive cuts, broke some tackles, and had a couple of bursts that reminded people he was a <a href="http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/mtt/drake_johnson_810574.html">pretty accomplished hurdler</a>&nbsp;at Pioneer. &nbsp;Once De&#39;Veon Smith left the game with an injury, Johnson stepped in and turned a close-ish game into a blowout, and as noted before had the first 100-yard performance against a conference opponent in about a year. &nbsp;Plus, being a hometown kid performing so well on Homecoming, after such a tumultuous week, is a great story and one he&#39;ll probably remember forever.</p>
<p>That said, I have no expectation that he (or this team) will be able to reproduce this running effort against anyone else on the schedule save (maybe) Northwestern, but even that might be generous. &nbsp;It has literally been years since Michigan had anything approximating a consistent running game, and that was mostly because of the threat of Denard in the backfield. &nbsp;With Gardner still nursing an injured ankle and the coaches consciously not asking him to do much on the ground, this 184 yards feels like the end of a movie that probably won&#39;t have any more sequels this year.</p>
<p><strong>Best: &nbsp;The Mendoza Line</strong></p>
<p><img alt="" height="400" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/15c284cd8d46bdaanotes/mario_mendoza.jpg" width="293" /></p>
<p>This is the second team Michigan held a team under 200 yards of total offense (the other Miami [NTM]), and 75 of those came on IU&#39;s 2nd-to-last drive of the game. &nbsp;I know IU is starting 18th-string freshmen and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xander_Harris">Buffy sidekick</a>&nbsp;Zander Diamont, who has thrown something like 23 passes for 35 yards in his career, but holding superback Tevin Coleman to a shade over 100 yards even with those garbage carries is impressive. &nbsp;Yes, everyone knew that IU had exactly two good players on offense - Coleman and Wynn - and so the defense was able to shift its formations to shutting down those two players, but &nbsp;it is still pretty impressive that the defense was actually able to execute as well as it did.</p>
<p>It&#39;s hard to tell if the unit is &quot;good&quot; or not, since they alternately kick offenses off the field quickly and give up 80+ yard TD drives to end halves, and the offense has been so disjointed and anemic against most teams on the schedule that they tend to give up yardage and points out of exhaustion as much as poor playmaking. &nbsp;Even the fact that the offense is one of the slowest in the country (thus reducing the total number of plays per game for both teams) hasn&#39;t been a blessing, since 3-and-outs that take 30 seconds or 3-and-outs that take 1 1/2/ minutes aren&#39;t functionally different.</p>
<p>I don&#39;t expect them to replicate a game like this against anyone left on the schedule, but looking at Maryland and NW I see the possibility for the defense to make a bit of a stand these next couple of weeks before OSU, well, you&#39;ve all seen <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oz_(TV_series)"><em>Oz</em></a>. &nbsp;At best, it&#39;s going to be one of the lighter death scenes in Oz.</p>
<p><img alt="" height="213" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/15c284cd8d46bdaanotes/youre_doomed.gif" width="377" /></p>
<p><strong>Best: &nbsp;Disruption</strong></p>
<p>Again with all &quot;this is Indiana&quot; caveats applying, the defense still had 12 TFLs, including 2 sacks and another QB hit, spearheaded by Jake Ryan absolutely abusing IU&#39;s offensive line for 2.5 TFLs and 10 solo tackles all around. &nbsp;It still feels like a bit of a waste with him in the middle, but it was nice to see him has such a disruptive effect in the game.</p>
<p>It was also the second week in a row that Michigan got a bit of luck in the fumble recovery game, this time Mone recovering Coleman&#39;s second stumble-fumble of the first half that Michigan capitalized on for an early 10-point lead. &nbsp;It&#39;s a bit too little, too late, but after having major &quot;luck&quot; issues with fumbles and loose balls the past couple of years, it is nice to see the pendulum turn a bit toward the good guys.</p>
<p><strong>Worst: &nbsp;The Muggles</strong></p>
<p>Straight off, I didn&#39;t know what a Muggle was until this tweet came out. &nbsp;Despite being a guy who follows professional wrestling, I find stuff like <em>Game of Thrones</em> and <em>Harry Potter</em> slogs to read and just, I don&#39;t know, boring. &nbsp;By all means enjoy what you like, but I&#39;ve always found it hilarious that a Board post about Wrestlemania is littered with people calling it dumb and fake and yet there are heated discussions about characters in a show based on a series of books about dragons and mythical wolves.</p>
<p>Anyway, apparently Elliott Mealer called the University of Michigan students who called for Dave Brandon&#39;s firing <a href="http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/elliott-mealers-tweet-non-athletes-are-muggles">muggles</a>, which followed up earlier comments from &nbsp;other former players that took issue with (I presume) their impression that people were a bit too excited about a guy they knew getting fired, and that the peanut gallery basically won out over the people who had played for the teams, including the current players. &nbsp;He later deleted the tweet, but because this is the internet a not insignificant number of people returned fire at Mealer, while other agreed with him for a variety of reasons (bad precedence, issues of accountability, etc.).</p>
<p>I don&#39;t agree with Mealer&#39;s specific rationale, as the &quot;you didn&#39;t play, so how do you know&quot; argument is factually weak and intellectually lazy. &nbsp;I don&#39;t need to have played lacrosse to know Dave Brandon wasn&#39;t very popular at UM and the lines against him were calcified, just like it doesn&#39;t take a parent to know this probably was a bad idea.</p>
<p><img alt="" height="178" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/15c284cd8d46bdaanotes/c-u.gif" width="248" /></p>
<p>Still, he has his right to an opinion, just like anyone else.</p>
<p>But I have a bigger issue with the counter-argument that without &quot;the muggles&quot; paying tickets/attending games, there wouldn&#39;t be a need for guys like Mealer. &nbsp;First off, most schools don&#39;t &quot;make money&quot; on college sports; Michigan is one of the few with an athletic department that generates a profit and is self-sustaining; the vast majority of departments rely on public and private funding to keep everything running. &nbsp;And yet, there are over 125 FBS teams, and even more D1 athletic departments. &nbsp;Unless we take the argument to its logical extreme that nobody, anywhere would watch college sports, fans&#39; contributions don&#39;t cover the cost of an athletic department. &nbsp;If it did, we wouldn&#39;t have basically any sports other than basketball, football, and baseball in the south and hockey in the northeast and Minnesota, and even that might be a stretch.</p>
<p>Secondly, the &quot;I pay your salary&quot; tone devalues a human&#39;s opinion and makes it akin to rank entertainment for the crowd&#39;s pleasure. &nbsp;You see it with the arguments against paying players a stipend beyond their scholarships, this idea that they should be happy they have received what they did and stop complaining because most everyone else paid his/her way at Michigan. &nbsp;Now, I&#39;m not sure about the financial situation for others, but I paid part of my way through Michigan but had assistance from family; I definitely couldn&#39;t have afforded it without my loving benefactors (read: parents). &nbsp;I&#39;ve since paid for two graduated degrees via a combination of loans, scholarships, and part-time work, but 18-year-old BronxBlue had some help, and based on my peers at UM I wasn&#39;t the outlier. &nbsp;And even if you did pay your whole way, I don&#39;t see how that should be held against other people who, for various reasons, are deemed worthy of additional assistance because of some extraordinary ability. &nbsp;We give scholarships to budding math geniuses, and yet in my years of work in various university licensing offices the vast majority of these individuals didn&#39;t generate enough money to cover their funding. &nbsp;It isn&#39;t their fault; in theory university&#39;s are designed to mold the future generations, and that can come from a multitude of actions.</p>
<p>Nobody is &quot;right&quot; in this situation; it&#39;s just a bunch of opinions about something that is history. &nbsp;Yes, mob rule isn&#39;t usually the best option for making important decisions, but in this case it was pretty clear that Brandon&#39;s continued employment was untenable, and the issue was not if but when. &nbsp;At the same time, men and women who work with Dave Brandon, who interact with him on a daily basis, may hold a different opinion of him compared to those who know him only from blog posts and email exchanges, some of whom certainly aren&#39;t blameless about the tone of the discussions. &nbsp;The old saying is you can&#39;t get 10 people to decide on the toppings for a pizza, so expecting everyone to agree about something so dramatic as the firing of a prominent member of the Michigan athletic department is nigh impossible.</p>
<p>Still, it continues to bother me how quickly the discussion turns from a difference of opinion to attacks on people&#39;s character or station in life, and I had (foolishly) hoped that the bulk of Michigan fans would have let it go.</p>
<p><strong>Best: &nbsp;Northwestern</strong></p>
<p>They lost at <a href="http://espn.go.com/college-football/team/_/id/77/northwestern-wildcats">Iowa 48 to 7</a>, gaining a total of 180 yards of offense. &nbsp;Justin Jackson averaged more yards a run (4.0) than Trevor Siemian did throwing it (3.8), which I hear isn&#39;t a good thing. &nbsp;Hopefully Michigan can do roughly the same and get the back to .500 before the big showdown (<em>sigh</em>) with Maryland to decide bowl eligibility and let me book my ticket to the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium! &nbsp;Metro North, here I come!</p>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/diaries/best-and-worst-indiana-0#commentsbest and worstBrady HokeDave BrandonDevin GardnerDrake JohnsonfootballIndianaMon, 03 Nov 2014 03:41:35 +0000bronxblue91690 at http://mgoblog.com2014-2015 Preseason All-Big Ten Hoops Teamshttp://mgoblog.com/diaries/2014-2015-preseason-all-big-ten-hoops-teams
<p align="left"><em><a href="http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/meta-hello-alex-cook-joining-mgoblog-hoops-staff" target="_blank">As some of you know</a>, I&rsquo;m joining MGoBlog to provide various types of basketball coverage, now that we&rsquo;re a #basketballschool and all that. A brief introduction: I&rsquo;m an Honors LSA Senior majoring in English (hopefully with a creative writing sub-concentration), I grew up making weekly pilgrimages from the Grand Rapids area to Ann Arbor on Fall Saturdays with my parents&mdash;both of whom graduated from the B School before Ross slapped his name on it&mdash;and younger brother&mdash;an Honors LSA sophomore (who is also named Brian Cook). I am not related to the proprietor of this site, as far as he and I know.<strong> </strong>We were a football family, but I fell in love with Michigan Hoops in 2009-2010 with Manny, Peedi, Coach B, and the gang. I&rsquo;ve learned to love the NBA recently as well, but regret that I missed the glory years of my Detroit Pistons. I&rsquo;m a Lions masochist, I complain about the Tigers&rsquo; managing and bullpen all summer, and I recently committed to Everton as my new EPL team (because Tim Howard&rsquo;s a national hero). It&rsquo;s a little up in the air as of right now, but Ace and I will sort out who covers what during hoops season. As for non-sports things: I&rsquo;m a proud native Michigander and spend my summers living on Barlow Lake&mdash;Heaven on Earth, as far as I&rsquo;m considered&mdash;I run as quickly as Terrance Taylor and am addicted to Bruegger&rsquo;s on North U (these things may be related), and if anybody wants to hire me to a full-time job after school, PLEASE DO. If you see me on campus, say hi. I&rsquo;ll be the tall, skinny-fat guy with curly black hair and light blue headphones.</em></p>
<p align="left"><em>Follow me on Twitter ( <a href="https://twitter.com/alexcook616" target="_blank">@alexcook616</a> ) </em></p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/1415-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="1415 preseason all b1g" border="0" height="167" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/1415-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="1415 preseason all b1g" width="468" /></a></p>
<p align="center"><i>(Freshmen and incoming transfers are not included. They&rsquo;re very difficult to accurately contextualize with returning players and they&rsquo;ll be covered next week.)</i></p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="center"><em><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/Yogi-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="Yogi preseason all b1g" border="0" height="251" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/Yogi-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="Yogi preseason all b1g" width="404" /></a></em></p>
<p align="center"><i>For the Big Ten Player Comparisons, I created an algorithm that spits out the most similar statistical profiles for a given player&rsquo;s. There are 20 unweighted categories&mdash;most of which are advanced metrics&mdash;but shooting and rebounding are well-accounted for. The database consists of 750 players from the 2008-2014 seasons. This post is already absurdly long, so I&rsquo;ll have to explain it further at some other time. This system will probably be used pretty extensively.</i></p>
<p align="left">Considering that the Hoosiers had Yogi Ferrell and Noah Vonleh&mdash;the latter was drafted in the lottery of a deep draft&mdash;their struggles were perplexing. A stable of uninspiring role players did little to augment the talents of their two stars and their offense was often stagnant and extremely turnover prone. Indiana didn&rsquo;t shoot the ball well from the field, but the inability to hold onto the ball was crippling&mdash;IU finished 330<sup>th</sup> nationally in turnover rate, easily the last in the Big Ten. Ferrell can be best categorized as a scoring point guard: he&rsquo;s ball-dominant and often probes the defense with his quickness rather than driving right to the rim, he&rsquo;s one of the better shooters in the league (40% on a ridiculous 220 attempts, mostly from above the break), and he gets to the free throw line and shoots better than 80% from the stripe over his career. There were a few games that Yogi took over with his scoring ability: 30 points (on just 15 FGA) at Illinois, 27 (including 7 made threes) against Michigan and at Purdue, and 25 and 24 in two games against Wisconsin. With Indiana&rsquo;s turnover issues and Ferrell&rsquo;s role as its offensive catalyst, his turnover rate&mdash;18.0%&mdash;wasn&rsquo;t ideal, but it wasn&rsquo;t exactly anomalous amongst analogous point guards.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/yogi-scatterplot-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="yogi scatterplot preseason all b1g" border="0" height="285" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/yogi-scatterplot-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="yogi scatterplot preseason all b1g" width="473" /></a></p>
<p>Yogi didn&rsquo;t have the ball-security of a Jordan Taylor or Drew Neitzel, but it wasn&rsquo;t bad. Turning the ball over was a collective effort: the entire rotation (aside from Ferrell) had turnover rates of at least 20%. Adding five-star combo guard James Blackmon, Jr. should help out immensely in regard to that issue and it should enable Ferrell to play off-the-ball and distribute a little more this season. Ferrell will likely be the best point guard in the Big Ten and there&rsquo;s a chance that he could lead the league in scoring.</p>
<p><strong>[After THE JUMP: Caris checks in, others.]</strong></p>
<a name="more"></a><!--break--><!--break--><p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/Caris-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="Caris preseason all b1g" border="0" height="251" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/Caris-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="Caris preseason all b1g" width="404" /></a></p>
<p>This willowy combo guard is preparing to slide into the lineage of LaVall Jordan-coached Michigan playmakers; Darius Morris begot Trey Burke, who begot Nik Stauskas, who is now begetting Caris LeVert. All of those guys were slightly different: Morris had extraordinary vision and playmaking flair, Burke was the consummate modern point guard, controlling and dominating the game in every way, Stauskas was the best shooter (but not just a shooter) and the bounciest. LeVert ascended to major minutes last season in the wake of Burke and Tim Hardaway, Jr.&rsquo;s departures and effectively replaced Hardaway&rsquo;s production in his first season of significant playing time.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/Caris-radar-preseason-all-b1G.png"><img alt="Caris radar preseason all b1G" border="0" height="350" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/Caris-radar-preseason-all-b1G_thumb.png" title="Caris radar preseason all b1G" width="359" /></a></p>
<p align="left">LeVert was probably slightly better because of his passing ability. Their shooting splits differed&mdash;Tim (48 / 37 / 69) was much better at the rim but Caris (46 / 41 / 77) got to the free throw line and converted there&mdash;but the end result was quite similar. Since Hardaway, who became a viable NBA rotation player, posted that type of season in his third year of major minutes (while LeVert played that well in his first season as a starter), it&rsquo;s an exciting comparison. In addition, LeVert is extremely young for his class (he just turned 20), so NBA draftniks assume that he has more improvement in store. His combination of length and handle are terrifying for opposing defenders: his shot is extremely quick and hard to contest and he&rsquo;s slippery enough to get to the rim. Added weight should help LeVert&rsquo;s ability to absorb contact near the basket and he could see a mammoth usage rate depending on the development of Derrick Walton and Zak Irvin. Between his yet-untapped defensive potential, his positional versatility (he could theoretically play one-through three in the NBA at some point), and his shooting ability, Caris probably has the highest ceiling of any Big Ten prospect.</p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/petteway-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="petteway preseason all b1g" border="0" height="251" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/petteway-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="petteway preseason all b1g" width="404" /></a></p>
<p align="left">Terran Petteway was the star of Nebrasketball&rsquo;s emergence; the unheralded transfer from Texas Tech exploded onto the national scene, led the Big Ten in scoring, and was a first-team All-Conference selection. The Huskers struggled offensively even with Petteway&rsquo;s prolific scoring ability, finishing ninth in conference efficiency margin. Petteway scored in a variety of ways&mdash;most effectively on drives to the basket, where he finished at 60% (per hoop-math) and often drew fouls&mdash;but his numbers are inflated because of an astronomically high usage rate; only two Big Ten players had a higher Shot % in the last seven years (DeShaun Thomas and Jon Leuer, Petteway is tied for third with Talor Battle and Deshawn Sims). Petteway had a much lower offensive rating than those four. It&rsquo;s frustrating to see Nebraska possessions routinely devolve into ball-stopping isolations and Petteway&rsquo;s often tasked with creating late in the shot clock with low-percentage pull-up jumpers from outside the paint. He shot 32.7% from three on about 4.6 attempts per game, which isn&rsquo;t ideal. Here&rsquo;s a blind resume comparison to contextualize Petteway&rsquo;s statistical profile.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/petteway-profile-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="petteway profile preseason all b1g" border="0" height="281" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/petteway-profile-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="petteway profile preseason all b1g" width="182" /></a></p>
<p>&ldquo;A&rdquo; is obviously Petteway&mdash;he&rsquo;s less efficient than the other two, but does take a significantly larger portion of his team&rsquo;s shots while on the floor. Other than that, the players are fairly similar for the most part, although Petteway&rsquo;s ability to draw fouls and shoot free throws does stand out. &ldquo;B&rdquo; is Penn State&rsquo;s D.J. Newbill and &ldquo;C&rdquo; is Illinois&rsquo;s Rayvonte Rice. There is value in shot-creation in Petteway&rsquo;s case: which other Husker can manufacture offense out of a staid offense by himself? Efficiency decreases linearly with usage and Nebraska simply needs Petteway to have a permanent green light and act as their permanent safety valve. Ultimately though, his team winning enhances his reputation and distances him from Newbill, Rice, and the like. More efficient play from Petteway&mdash;and an almost necessarily lower usage rate&mdash;could help provide Nebrasketball with some staying power.</p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dawson-preseaon-all-b1g.png"><img alt="dawson preseaon all b1g" border="0" height="251" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dawson-preseaon-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="dawson preseaon all b1g" width="404" /></a></p>
<p>Michigan State lost two players to the NBA&mdash;Adreian Payne and Gary Harris&mdash;and have a ton of questions regarding playmaking responsibilities, possession allocation, and face the prospect of giving several largely unproven players greater roles on offense. Swiss Army knife wing Denzel Valentine should shoulder the primary burden of being the nominal go-to guy, though Branden Dawson will likely see a big uptick in usage as well. Stylistically, Dawson is a D-1 tight end playing IM Basketball: he&rsquo;s extremely athletic, runs the floor well, can defend most positions, and rebounds with ferocity. He wasn&rsquo;t very refined as a junior (though he does have an ugly-yet-sort-of-effective post-up game on the low block), but he&rsquo;s simply able to impact the game with his huge frame and top-notch agility. With Kenny Kaminski&rsquo;s dismissal, Dawson will probably spend most of his time at the four, which is probably his best college position; at 6&rsquo;6, he&rsquo;s a little short, but has the muscle and the tenaciousness to play much bigger than his height. He can&rsquo;t really put the ball on the floor or shoot from outside, which might negatively impact Michigan State&rsquo;s spacing. His block and steal rates&mdash;the best statistical indicators of athleticism&mdash;were quite excellent.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dawson-table-preseason-allb1g.png"><img alt="dawson table preseason allb1g" border="0" height="203" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dawson-table-preseason-allb1g_thumb.png" title="dawson table preseason allb1g" width="377" /></a></p>
<p align="center"><em>(Yes, that was from two seasons ago. Dawson was close at 3.7% / 2.7% last season).</em></p>
<p align="left">Damian Johnson! After Minnesota, he bounced around the D-League and now plays in Australia. Anyways, this rough metric does a decent job of measuring defensive activity and Dawson is in the company of some excellent defensive players. Dawson&rsquo;s similarity scores indicate that he&rsquo;s a fairly unique player, but the appearance of Mitch McGary (as a pretty interesting statistical comparison for Dawson) and Jordan Morgan&mdash;thrice&mdash;is quite interesting: Dawson was more efficient than all of those UM seasons (except for Jordan Morgan&rsquo;s unbelievable senior year) and it&rsquo;s not really surprising that he should share a statistical profile with centers because of his efficient two-point shooting and rebounding on both ends. Dawson&rsquo;s NCAA Tournament hints at his elusive potential: 10 and 8 against Delaware, 26 and 9 against Harvard, 24 and 10 against top-seeded Virginia, and just 5 and 8 in the season finale against UConn. Dawson may struggle with a heavier workload, but he does have a sizable cushion from which he can fall efficiency-wise (and still be considered efficient) and he will be effective on the glass and on defense regardless.</p>
<p align="left"><strong>A brief Branden Dawson vs. Sam Dekker interlude</strong></p>
<p>Dekker was the hardest omission from the first-team and while 4 / 5 of the spots fall in line with the rough consensus, Dekker is noticeably absent. To the tempo-free!</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dawson-vs-dekker-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="dawson vs dekker preseason all b1g" border="0" height="107" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dawson-vs-dekker-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="dawson vs dekker preseason all b1g" width="606" /></a></p>
<p>A few observations:</p>
<ul>
<li>
The disparity in minutes played is quite significant, although Dawson&rsquo;s number was deflated by his injury last season. Those numbers should be pretty similar this year.</li>
<li>
It can easily be posited as a &ldquo;better usage and worse efficiency&rdquo; vs. &ldquo;better efficiency and worse usage&rdquo; argument: Dawson&rsquo;s more efficient, shoots at higher percentages, and notably doesn&rsquo;t have a low 3-point percentage with a fair amount of attempts like Dekker does. Dekker takes a larger share of the possessions for his team though.</li>
<li>
Dawson is significantly better on the glass and puts up better defensive statistics. It&rsquo;s hard to quantify defensive performance (especially compared with how easy it is to quantify offensive performance), but both players pass the &ldquo;eye test&rdquo; as good defenders as lanky fours.</li>
<li>
Both were once five-stars out of high school, for whatever that&rsquo;s worth.</li>
</ul>
<p>Dekker is considered to be a tantalizing NBA prospect, a long and versatile three that can play some four at the next level. Barring a surprise, Dawson probably won&rsquo;t stick in the league for significant time. Still, Dekker&rsquo;s shooting from deep last year is a big concern and until he demonstrates that it&rsquo;s better, he&rsquo;ll continue to be less efficient than Dawson. It&rsquo;s fair to give Dawson an edge on defense and there&rsquo;s a decided difference on the glass. If Dekker has a breakout season (which is slightly more probable than Dawson becoming a much better player), he&rsquo;d make the list at the end of the year, but between Frank Kaminsky, Traevon Jackson, and Nigel Hayes, there might not be enough possessions for one.</p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/kaminsky-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="kaminsky preseason all b1g" border="0" height="251" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/kaminsky-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="kaminsky preseason all b1g" width="404" /></a></p>
<p>Frank Kaminsky is the consensus pre-season Big Ten Player of the Year, for good reason. He&rsquo;s the best player on the overwhelming favorite to win the conference; he has legitimate NBA potential; he had a breakout NCAA Tournament, including an evisceration of Arizona, who had the nation&rsquo;s best defense. Few college players&mdash;especially big men&mdash;can compare with Kaminsky&rsquo;s all-around offensive skill: he shoots a respectable percentage from three, can score from the midrange, faces up or posts up on defenders from the block extended, and his length and precocious footwork make him an excellent finisher in traffic. He can rebound decently enough, he takes up a ton of possessions (he&rsquo;s easily the Big Ten&rsquo;s best returning combination of efficiency and usage), and he defends well enough to get by. Wisconsin&rsquo;s offense was excellent last season and returns many of the same pieces, but it will be interesting to see how well he plays for extended time alongside both Nigel Hayes and Sam Dekker. It&rsquo;s hard to imagine that he&rsquo;ll drop off much, if at all: even though Nik Stauskas was a very deserving B1G POTY last season, Kaminsky put up a very impressive year.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/kaminsky-scatterplot-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="kaminsky scatterplot preseason all b1g" border="0" height="283" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/kaminsky-scatterplot-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="kaminsky scatterplot preseason all b1g" width="473" /></a></p>
<p>Adding together the z-scores of usage and efficiency doesn&rsquo;t make for a definitive player ranking system by any means (for example, it doesn&rsquo;t consider how much a player is on the floor, which was the biggest difference between Kaminsky and Stauskas last season), but it does help tease out some of the most impactful players in the league in recent history. Evan Turner, Trey Burke, and Jordan Taylor stand out in front of the pack, which seems intuitively correct. The biggest question for Kaminsky this year will be how many minutes he can play this season; Nigel Hayes was a surprisingly effective freshman and formed a formidable center platoon with Kaminsky, but now he may slide to the four so they both see more playing time. Kaminsky and Hayes can both stretch the floor, so having two big guys may not create much of a spacing issue. Kaminsky decided to spurn the NBA and come back to school for his senior year and it would be a mild surprise if he didn&rsquo;t finish the season as the best player in the conference.</p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="left"><strong>SECOND TEAM</strong></p>
<p align="left"><strong>Andre Hollins (Minnesota)</strong></p>
<p><i>30.5 mpg, 13.6 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 2.4 apg, 1.8 tpg, 41 / 35 / 84 shooting, 109.8 ORtg, 24.2 % Poss</i></p>
<p>Between Hollins and Deandre Mathieu (who might have been the toughest omission from the top fifteen), Minnesota has an extremely fun backcourt. Mathieu, a speedy, diminutive true point guard who transferred in from a JUCO last year, enables Hollins to play off the ball. It&rsquo;s difficult to classify Hollins: he&rsquo;s nominally a combo guard and even though his assist rate isn&rsquo;t too bad, he&rsquo;s probably just an undersized two, though he can certainly operate as a score-first point guard. He&rsquo;s quick, can get his shot off from all over the floor, and has the ability to score in bunches (as evidenced by a career-high of 41 points against his hometown Memphis Tigers as a sophomore). The most efficient part of his game is his surprisingly great free throw rate&mdash;he attempts 5 per game&mdash;and his excellent free throw percentage (84%). Before going down with an ankle injury against Wisconsin, he averaged almost 16 points per game in nine contests against high major opponents. That ankle injury nagged him for the whole year and limited his effectiveness, but when healthy, he could be the boost that Minnesota needs to get back into the NCAA Tournament.</p>
<p><b>D.J. Newbill (Penn State)</b></p>
<p><i>34.4 mpg, 17.8 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 1.7 apg, 2.1 tpg, 51 / 33 / 75 shooting, 108.3 ORtg, 26.9 %Poss</i></p>
<p>Penn State gets the somewhat dubious distinction of placing the most &ldquo;best player on a bad team&rdquo; guy in the Big Ten on the All-Conference squad; Newbill is pretty solid (as evidenced by his numbers in the comparison with Terran Petteway), but he does get inflated numbers by virtue of being a very high-usage guy on a team that doesn&rsquo;t have many other scoring options. Now that Tim Frazier&rsquo;s gone, he might trend into Terran Petteway usage territory, which would be pretty interesting. Penn State&rsquo;s been stuck in a series of extremely-high usage guards lately.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/newbill-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="newbill preseason all b1g" border="0" height="177" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/newbill-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="newbill preseason all b1g" width="377" /></a></p>
<p>Newbill did drastically increase his efficiency in his second year in the program after transferring back from Southern Miss to be nearer to home. He&rsquo;s very effective at the rim for a guard, can shoot adequately enough from the midrange, and, like Petteway, is best off when he doesn&rsquo;t shoot threes. At 6&rsquo;4, he has good size for the position and he&rsquo;s skilled enough to create with the ball in his hands. Penn State will go as he goes (which can work, as he scored an average of 24 points in the Nittany Lions&rsquo; two game sweep of Ohio State last season).</p>
<p><b>Aaron White (Iowa)</b></p>
<p><i>28.1 mpg, 12.7 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 1.8 apg, 1.8 tpg, 63 / 26 / 81 shooting, 122.7 ORtg, 20.1 %Poss</i></p>
<p>Aaron White is an incredibly effective player in a specific role. Iowa has size, so he&rsquo;s often put on the floor as a wing, he can&rsquo;t shoot from three-point range and he knows that, he&rsquo;s effective on the glass, and he&rsquo;s solid defensively unless he&rsquo;s chasing smaller guards around. He&rsquo;s incredibly effective at putting the ball on the floor and getting to the hoop. Between his length and quickness in transition, excellent finishing, wise shot selection, and ability to cash in on a multitude of free throw attempts, Aaron White is extremely efficient&mdash;his true shooting percentage was the best in the Big Ten and the 15<sup>th</sup>-best in the country last season at 66%. A two-point field goal percentage of 63% and a free throw percentage of 81% is extremely rare.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/white-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="white preseason all b1g" border="0" height="285" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/white-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="white preseason all b1g" width="473" /></a></p>
<p>Of all the Big Ten players over the last seven seasons, only two others had a two-point field goal percentage of better than 60% and a free throw percentage of better than 80%: Wisconsin&rsquo;s Josh Gasser (as a freshman) and Purdue&rsquo;s Ryne Smith. The percentage of shots taken on the floor was much higher for White (17.9) than 12.3, posted by Smith, and 11.4, posted by Gasser. Aaron White might be the most statistically anomalous player in the league. He&rsquo;s really good at one thing and definitely passable at nearly everything else&mdash;except for three-point shooting&mdash;but defenses might key on him after the departure of Roy Devyn Marble. Regardless, he&rsquo;s one of the most interesting players in the conference to watch, because there actually might not be a player in the country better than Aaron White at driving into the paint and getting points.</p>
<p><b>Sam Dekker (Wisconsin)</b></p>
<p><em>29.8 mpg, 12.4 ppg, 6.1 rpg, 1.4 apg, 1.1 tpg, 55 / 33 / 69 shooting, 114.7 ORtg, 22.3 %Poss</em></p>
<p>It&rsquo;s really hard to peg Dekker. He&rsquo;s a stretch-four&mdash;one that might have to slide up to the three&mdash;who isn&rsquo;t a great creator and doesn&rsquo;t shoot well from outside, but finishes extremely well at the rim and makes phenomenal cuts in the half-court. From the similarity score system, his second-most statistically analogous player was Glenn Robinson III.</p>
<p><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dekker-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="dekker preseason all b1g" border="0" height="350" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/dekker-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="dekker preseason all b1g" width="359" /></a></p>
<p>Dekker was significantly better than Robinson on the defensive glass, but that was pretty much the only major statistical difference between the two. Dekker got to the line more (FT Rate of 38.3 vs. Robinson&rsquo;s 30.8) but shot worse from there (69% vs. 76%). Their usage rates and advanced shooting metrics are pretty much identical. Individual defense is difficult to quantify, but it&rsquo;s a stretch to assume that Dekker was much better than Robinson on that end of the floor. It&rsquo;s hard to buy into Dekker as a major contributor and legitimate Big Ten Player of the Year candidate right now, because he&rsquo;d need a big jump to move from &ldquo;great second or excellent third option&rdquo; to legitimate stardom. He&rsquo;s still an appealing NBA prospect, but a huge leap doesn&rsquo;t seem like it&rsquo;s in the cards when he&rsquo;s surrounded by established talent&mdash;Kaminsky and Traevon Jackson&mdash;and a more likely breakout candidate: Nigel Hayes.</p>
<p><b>A.J. Hammons (Purdue)</b></p>
<p><em>25.0 mpg, 10.8 ppg, 7.4 rpg, 3.1 bpg, 2.5 tpg, 53 / (N/a) / 70 shooting, 98.5 ORtg, 24.3 %Poss</em></p>
<p>Behind Frank Kaminksy, there aren&rsquo;t a lot of great centers in the Big Ten. Plenty of guys are at least decent&mdash;Hammons, Nebraska&rsquo;s Walter Pitchford, Iowa&rsquo;s Adam Woodbury, Minnesota&rsquo;s Elliott Eliason, Northwestern&rsquo;s Alex Olah, Ohio State&rsquo;s Amir Williams, Rutgers&rsquo;s Kadeem Jack&mdash;but nobody comes close to Kaminsky. Hammons fits here on the second-team almost be default; he&rsquo;s always discussed as having NBA potential (though he&rsquo;s never shown more than intermittent flashes of that), but he&rsquo;s been woefully inconsistent for Purdue. He gets by with his insane combination of size and coordination and occasionally shows the ability to take over games, but it&rsquo;s equally likely that he doesn&rsquo;t get touches, seems disengaged on both ends of the floor, and becomes a turnstile on defense. On the aggregate, he&rsquo;s a pretty decent&mdash;though quite high-variance&mdash;player and this could be the year he finally puts it all together and carries Purdue out of the funk that they&rsquo;ve been in over recent years. Of course, it&rsquo;s hard to bet on him, especially if he&rsquo;s burdened with the pressure of being the Boilermakers&rsquo; go-to guy.</p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="left"><strong>THIRD TEAM</strong></p>
<p align="left"><strong>Derrick Walton (Michigan)</strong></p>
<p align="left"><em>26.7 mpg, 7.9 ppg, 2.0 rpg, 2.9 apg, 1.5 tpg, 45 / 41 / 79 shooting, 112.2 ORtg, 18.2 %Poss</em></p>
<p align="left">While Caris LeVert projects to be Michigan&rsquo;s alpha dog this season, sophomore point guard Derrick Walton should really benefit from another year of LaVall Jordan&rsquo;s tutelage and could have a breakout season. The most encouraging parts of his game last year were his finishing ability at the rim and his three-point shooting (41%).&nbsp; With another year of physical development and experience within Michigan&rsquo;s offense, Walton should be even better. He&rsquo;s good with or without the ball in his hands and could very well be the second-best point guard in the conference behind Yogi Ferrell.</p>
<p align="left"><strong>Dez Wells (Maryland)</strong></p>
<p align="left"><em>30.6 mpg, 14.9 ppg. 4.3 rpg, 2.2 apg, 2.5 tpg, 52 / 30 / 82 shooting, 109.6 ORtg, 25.0 %Poss</em></p>
<p align="left">I&rsquo;ll admit to not having seen tape of Dez Wells. Here are the most approximate statistical profiles to his season last year for Maryland in the ACC.</p>
<p align="center"><a href="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/wells-preseason-all-b1g.png"><img alt="wells preseason all b1g" border="0" height="253" rel="lightbox" src="http://mgoblog.com/sites/mgoblog.com/files/wells-preseason-all-b1g_thumb.png" title="wells preseason all b1g" width="323" /></a></p>
<p align="left">He&rsquo;s a chucker (like most of these guys), but Wells had a higher free throw rate than any of the players listed above, except for Indiana&rsquo;s one-and-done Eric Gordon.</p>
<p align="left"><strong>Rayvonte Rice (Illinois)</strong></p>
<p align="left"><em>32.7 mpg, 15.9 ppg, 6.0 rpg, 1.5 apg, 1.6 tpg, 50 / 30 / 73 shooting, 107.3 ORtg, 26.6 %Poss</em></p>
<p align="left">Illinois&rsquo;s nominal star a year ago, Rayvonte Rice played much better in the weaker non-conference part of the schedule than he did in Big Ten play. Like many of the Illini, he fell in love with the outside shot despite not being an effective outside shooter. Hopefully high-major guard transfers Aaron Cosby and Ahmad Starks&mdash;both of whom shot the ball excellently at Seton Hall and Oregon State, respectively&mdash;force Rice to stick to the better parts of his game, which involve driving to the basket and getting to the free throw line. He also has tremendous rebounding rates given his size at 6&rsquo;4.</p>
<p align="left"><strong>Shavon Shields (Nebraska)</strong></p>
<p align="left"><em>32.5 mpg, 12.8 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 1.6 apg, 1.6 tpg, 47 / 32 / 72 shooting, 105.7 ORtg, 22.5 %Poss</em></p>
<p align="left"><strong>Walter Pitchford (Nebraska)</strong></p>
<p align="left"><em>23.2 mpg, 9.3 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 0.5 apg, 0.5 tpg, 54 / 41 / 69 shooting, 121.1 ORtg, 18.3 %Poss</em></p>
<p align="left">Terran Petteway&rsquo;s two side kicks were a big reason that Nebraska was able to get over the hump and into the NCAA Tournament. Shields plays similarly to Petteway; he&rsquo;s best on straight line-drives to the rim, scores well around the basket, and can get to the free throw line, but doesn&rsquo;t shoot well from three-point range. As a freshman, Shields was probably Nebraska&rsquo;s go-to guy and he really excelled last year as a sophomore after Petteway&rsquo;s arrival. Pitchford is a nearly-perfect complement to those two, as he&rsquo;s an uncommon &ldquo;Stretch-5&rdquo; who is assisted on nearly every single one of his three-point attempts. Last season, Pitchford was the only Husker who could shoot efficiently from deep (41%) and his floor-spacing enables Petteway and Shields to get to the rim. With Leslee Smith&rsquo;s ACL tear, he might have to play more this season, which he probably can, because of a fairly low foul rate for a big man.</p>
<p align="center">* * *</p>
<p align="left"><strong>JUST MISSED THE CUT</strong></p>
<p align="left"><em>In no particular order</em></p>
<p align="left">G &ndash; Denzel Valentine, MSU; G &ndash; Deandre Mathieu, MINN; G &ndash; Shannon Scott, OSU; C &ndash; Amir Williams, OSU; G &ndash; Myles Mack, RUT; C &ndash; Kadeem Jack, RUT; F &ndash; Zak Irvin, MICH; G &ndash; Traevon Jackson, UW; F &ndash; Nigel Hayes, UW; C &ndash; Alex Olah, NW; G &ndash; Kendrick Nunn, ILL.</p>
http://mgoblog.com/diaries/2014-2015-preseason-all-big-ten-hoops-teams#commentsbasketballbasketball is good for seriousbasketball that doesn't suckIllinoisIndianaMarylandMichiganMichigan StateNebraskaPenn StatePurdue basketballwisconsinFri, 24 Oct 2014 20:21:04 +0000Alex Cook91330 at http://mgoblog.comDo you live in Indiana and have Directv? Check to make sure you still have NBChttp://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/do-you-live-indiana-and-have-directv-check-make-sure-you-still-have-nbc
<p>PSA: If you have Directv and live in Indiana, check to make sure you still have NBC. Due to a dispute between the NBC provider and Directv, NBC is not available for viewing to some of us lucky fans who want to see the game on Saturday or watch shows on a network that hasn&#39;t been relevant since Friends.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Maybe I&#39;ve been living with my head up my ass, but I had no idea about this until the TV ratings thread earlier today and I figured that it deserved its own thread.&nbsp;</p>
<p>The easiest way to get around this is to buy a cheap HD antenna and use it for Saturday. I found one pretty cheap on Amazon for only $10.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Good luck and may the corn be with you.&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>H/T to DMill2427 and MaizeNBlueInDC</p>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/do-you-live-indiana-and-have-directv-check-make-sure-you-still-have-nbc#commentsMGoBoardDirecTVfootballi hate cornIndianajust kidding i actually love cornNBCNotre DametvThu, 04 Sep 2014 01:10:54 +0000hart2089494 at http://mgoblog.com2014-2015 Indiana Basketball Previewhttp://mgoblog.com/diaries/2014-2015-indiana-basketball-preview
<p>Indiana:</p>
<p>Oh how fun this will be. Indiana loses NINE of thier players. A whole NINE!!! that is crazy. Evan Gordon, Jeff Howard, Taylor Wayer, and WIll Sheehey are graduating. Austin Etherington, Jonny Marlin, Jeremy Hollowell and Luke Fischer are transferring. And Noah Vonleh is leaving early for the NBA. Losing these players means losing:&nbsp;</p>
<p>55% PPG</p>
<p>62% MPG</p>
<p>62% RPG</p>
<p>50% APG</p>
<p>62% SPG</p>
<p>90% BPG</p>
<p>That is a lot to replace. The way to replace attrition like that is to bring in a really big recruiting class. Indiana did not do that. They are bringing in three solid Freshman, and only have a chance for two more. Here is their projected roster:</p>
<p># &nbsp; Name &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;HT &nbsp; WT &nbsp; YR &nbsp; POS</p>
<p>42 Peter Jurkin &nbsp; 7-0 &nbsp;230 &nbsp; JR. &nbsp;C</p>
<p>Only played eight games last year after getting injured. May play some valuable minutes off the bench.</p>
<p><strong>12 Hanner Mosquera-Perea 6-9 225 JR PF</strong></p>
<p>The starting Center, pretty much forced into the lineup. Averaged 2.8 points per game last year.</p>
<p><strong>11 Kevin Ferrell &nbsp;6-0 &nbsp;178 &nbsp; JR. &nbsp; PG</strong></p>
<p>Uggggghhhh Yogi Ferrell A.K.A. Michigan killer, will probably take all of their shots next year. He took 23% of their shots last year on a team with a future pro. Will most likely be B1G all conference next year. Averaged 17.3 points per game last year. Starting Point Guard.</p>
<p>30 Collin Hartman 6-6 210 &nbsp; SO. &nbsp;SF</p>
<p>Collin tore his ACL on the 15th of March, so he probably won&#39;t do anything next year. As hard as ACL tears are for football players, they are even harder on basketball players. Was not really a contributor before the injury.</p>
<p><strong>22 Stanford Robinson 6-4 193 SO. SG</strong></p>
<p>The starting Shooting Guard, started to blossom late in the year. Will take the third most amount of shots this year. Averaged 6.4 points per game last year.</p>
<p>21 Joe Fagan &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; 6-4 &nbsp;195 &nbsp; &nbsp;SO. &nbsp;SG</p>
<p>Walk-on, may get playing time you never know.</p>
<p><strong>15 Devin Davis &nbsp; &nbsp;6-7 &nbsp;221 &nbsp; &nbsp;SO. &nbsp;PF</strong></p>
<p>The starting Power Forward, only averaged 2.4 points per game, will play a little center.</p>
<p><strong>5 &nbsp;Troy Williams &nbsp; &nbsp;6-7 &nbsp;206 &nbsp; &nbsp; SO. &nbsp;SF</strong></p>
<p>Personally my least favorite player on the Hoosiers. After his two dunks against us he decided to stare down our players. To which told him to enjoy the N.I.T errrrr..... Anyways, he averaged 7.3 points per game, and will be a tough matchup for teams.</p>
<p>2 &nbsp;Andrew Calomeris 6-4 183 &nbsp;SO. &nbsp;SG</p>
<p>Walk-on</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp;James Blackmon &nbsp;6-4 &nbsp; 180 &nbsp;FR. &nbsp; SG</p>
<p>Many of you know of Blackmon from when we recruited him. He is a five star and will be the 6th man and eventually a starter. When he starts, Robinson will play the 3, Williams the 4 and Davis the 5.</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp;Robert Johnson &nbsp; &nbsp;6-3 &nbsp; &nbsp;180 &nbsp;FR. &nbsp; SG</p>
<p>A four star who will play, but not a &quot;20 minute a game&quot; guy</p>
<p>&nbsp; &nbsp;Max Hoetzel &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;6-7 &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;210 &nbsp;FR. &nbsp; SF</p>
<p>A three star, he will probably get 10 minutes a game.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Projected Starting line-up</p>
<p>Point guard: Kevin &quot;Yogi&quot; Ferrell</p>
<p>Shooting guard: Stanford Robinson</p>
<p>Small Forward: Troy Williams</p>
<p>Power Forward: Devin Davis</p>
<p>Center: Hanner Mosquera-Perea</p>
<p>Michigan plays Indiana on the road next year, which is quite a disadvantage for Michigan. Assembly Hall is a Michigan&#39;s enemy and the refs are big equalizer when the game is played there.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This team will not be very good, they will however finish better than teams like Purdue and Rutgers. They will continue to get home cooking and Ferrell will get hot in a couple of games. However, I do not see them finishing any better then 6-12 in the conference. It is too hard to replace nine players.</p>
<p>Next up... Penn State.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/diaries/2014-2015-indiana-basketball-preview#commentsbasketballIndianaWed, 02 Apr 2014 19:21:59 +0000Padog86564 at http://mgoblog.comInside the Boxscore - Team 134, Game 7http://mgoblog.com/diaries/inside-boxscore-team-134-game-7
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp; Holy Offensive Extravaganza Batman! In the interest of time, I&#39;m going to break format again, skip the introductory paragraph and get right to the numbers. Michigan gained 1237 yards on 98 plays, accruing 73 first downs in the process. Devin Gardner led the way with 712 yards passing. Jeremy Gallon&#39;s 26 receptions accounted for 560 of those yards. The rushing game returned in grand style, with Fitz Toussaint running for 234 yards and 8 touchdowns, behind a line featuring a fourth string left guard and three high school seniors. Michigan won the time of possession battle, 52:12 to 7:48. Michigan punted negative three times, and finished seven for four on third down conversions. Raymon Taylor led the defense with 37 tackles and 16 pass breakups. Yes, these numbers are completely made up. They are ridiculous, but so are these numbers:<br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Link:</strong> <a href="http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/101913aaa.html">http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/101913aaa.html</a></p>
<p><strong>Burst of Impetus</strong><br />
* Early in the game, it was obvious that Indiana was throwing to the receiver guarded by Raymon Taylor. Taylor got beat deep, giving up a 59 yard TD to IU. On the next drive, they went back at Taylor, hitting Latimer for a 14 yard gain. After an incomplete pass and a five yard run, Sudfeld went back towards Taylor. Taylor absolutely lit up the TE, Bolser, forcing an incompletion. Later in the first quarter, on another third down, Indiana went back at Taylor down the sideline. He just barely turned his head around and got another deflection. Later in the game he got another PBU on third down and forced a field goal. The boxscore lists him with 4 of Michigan&#39;s 5 pass breakups. He did make 9 tackles, so it&#39;s obvious Indiana was targeting him and giving him opportunities. He wasn&#39;t perfect, BUT HE MADE PLAYS. In a back and forth game, the key to winning was who was going to be able to break serve. Indiana was 8 of 14 on third down. Half of those stops are directly attributable to Taylor. The other defensive player who MADE PLAYS (2 of them, in fact) was Thomas Gordon. He did not record a tackle, but he did make two huge interceptions that gave the Impetus back to Michigan both times.</p>
<p><strong>Young 98</strong><br />
* Devin Gardner was 21 for 29 with ZERO INTERCEPTIONS! (That&#39;s not difficult to do when IU&#39;s DBs were rarely in the same time zone as our WRs, and the line provided good protection for the most part.)<br />
* He threw for 503 yards, 2 TDs, and a long of 70 yards (thanks to Gallon.)<br />
* His bad habit of flinging wild throws to avoid sacks returned, but fortunately, did not result in any INTs.<br />
* Al Borges is the QB coach. Is Al the one responsible for teaching Devin how to pitch the ball to Fitz? I&#39;m, of course, referring to the fumble. It was attributed to Fitz, but the pitch was the problem. I have a hard time picturing in my mind, Al out on the field giving Gardner instructions on the proper way to pitch the ball back to the RB.</p>
<p><strong>The Bluesmobile</strong><br />
* After suffering through the 27 for 27 documentary, Fitz ran 32 times for 151 yards net. The longest run was only 27 yards, so this is not one of those cases where a guy&#39;s stats are inflated by a 60 or 70 yard TD run. He scored 4 TDs.<br />
* Derrick Green pitched in 21 yards on 6 carries.</p>
<p><strong>V. Sinha Legends Jersey</strong><br />
* Jeremy Gallons actual stats were 14 receptions for 369 yards and 2 TDs. He caught 2/3 of Gardner&#39;s completions.<br />
* Devin Funchess was the second option, catching 4 balls for 84 yards. Towards the end of the game UofM was trying to run out the clock. They faced a 3rd and 6. Instead of running on third down, Al called for a pass. 38 yards later, Funchess had given UofM another first down, and three more opportunities to run clock. I think that is the go-for-the-win attitude that we became accustomed to under Brady Hoke, that was sadly missing last week against PSU.<br />
* Jeremy Jackson returned to the field, catching 2 balls for 23 yards.<br />
* I love Dileo and if I were in charge of the offense, I&#39;d involve him more, so what I&#39;m going to say next may amount to heresy. Is it possible that he&#39;s not getting open on the other ~60 plays, or that he&#39;s not great at blocking? I also wonder if he got hurt, because he wasn&#39;t back there fielding punts. Maybe Borges just wanted to give Devin a slightly bigger target in Jackson.</p>
<p><strong>Waffles</strong><br />
* Midway through the first quarter, Joey Burzynski got hurt. So let&#39;s review our situation at Left Guard this year. Glasgow started the season there, only to move to center in an attempt to shore up the middle. Chris Bryant was the next man in. He&#39;s either injured or not as effective as the staff would like, so he was replaced by Burzynski. When he got hurt, Kyle Bosch entered the lineup. Yep, our 4th string left guard. Indiana did get 2 sacks and 7 TFLs, but I can honestly say, I didn&#39;t notice Bosch out there, and that&#39;s a compliment for a lineman. He may have made a mistake or two, or missed an assignment, but I didn&#39;t notice.<br />
* A bruised and bloodied Taylor Lewan returned to the lineup. I was a little worried before the game started, as Lewan showed very little enthusiasm jumping up to touch the M Club banner. To think he could be making millions of dollars today, all I can say is thank you, we appreciate your effort and loyalty to our shared University.<br />
* I would be remiss not to mention Graham Glasgow&#39;s hustle. At the end of Gallon&#39;s 70 yard run after the catch, Glasgow was right there. There were several other long plays where I noticed Glasgow hustling down the field looking for another block. The guy can move for someone his size.</p>
<p><strong>Norf and Souf</strong><br />
* Norfleet returned 6 kicks for 121 yards. He made a couple poor decisions, but on average, the results were fine.</p>
<p><strong>Special Teams</strong><br />
* So is this blocked FG thing something I&#39;m going to have to worry about for the rest of the season?<br />
* Five of Wile&#39;s 10 kickoffs were touchbacks. IU didn&#39;t do much with 4 of the 5 they returned.<br />
* On one kickoff, we kicked from the 50 due to an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on IU. Doesn&#39;t game theory demand an onside-kick there? Or at least a high, short, coverage kick where you can pin them back inside the 20? If they recover the onside kick, they get the ball at their own 35. Instead, we kicked it out of the endzone and they got the ball at the 25. For 10 yards, I&#39;d take that chance at getting the ball back. This was not a field position game. This was a ball possession game, as in, if you had possession of the ball you were likely going to score.</p>
<p><strong>I&#39;m an international umpire</strong><br />
* The refs let them play. IU had 3 penalties for 20 yards and Michigan had 4 for 15 yards. I noticed some holding and maybe some DBs getting to the WR a little early, but nothing outrageous, and the officials didn&#39;t get nitpicky. I&#39;d rather they call a foul a foul, but it kept the flow of the game going nicely, and they were consistent, which is all you can ask for.</p>
<p><strong>Defense?</strong><br />
* I covered the important stuff in the Impetus section. We got some stops.<br />
* Help me out, Alannis Morrissette, is it ironic that we ended the game by sacking IU&#39;s QB? I say yes.<br />
* Besides Taylor&#39;s 9 tackles, JR3 had 8, Jourdan Lewis and Morgan had 5, and Wilson had 4. That&#39;s a lot of DBs, but that&#39;s to be expected in a game like this.</p>
<p><strong>Miscellaneous Bullets</strong><br />
* It seemed like neither defense could stop the opposing offense. In fact, it seemed like neither team faced many difficult third downs. So I decided to review the play-by-play and see how the two teams did on first and second down. My numbers aren&#39;t quite adding up, but they are close to being accurate. In the all-important second down conversion stat, Michigan dominated Indiana going 14 for 26, to Indiana&#39;s 10 for 24. On first down, Michigan was 14 for 41 to Indiana&#39;s 10 for 35. That&#39;s right, we had 35 first downs, and gained 28 of them, 80%, on either first or second down. Indiana&#39;s defense is horrible.</p>
<p><strong>100%PINK</strong><br />
* I mentioned in the Game 1 diary that my dad passed away from cancer this summer. Michigan broke out the pink accoutrements to raise awareness. I think most people are &quot;aware&quot; of the major cancers - breast, lung, prostrate, etc. In fact, my dad was a five year survivor of prostate cancer. Spending our limited resources attacking the most common cancers makes sense (Spock would agree, the needs of the many, etc.) but let&#39;s also spend some time raising awareness of the less common cancers, because these are often the ones that aren&#39;t diagnosed in a timely manner. A year and a half ago, dad was diagnosed with urothelial cancer. The problem was mis-diagnosed for a good 3-4 months, during which time the cancer may have doubled in size and changed from something that could be dealt with, to something that was fatal. I&#39;m all for raising awareness, but I also think we need to be doing more in terms of improving diagnosis and treatment options.</p>
<p>My dad took my brother to the Anthony Carter/IU game. I suppose I should be jealous of my brother for that, but I was the one who got to hear Bob Ufer call the play. So who was the lucky one? HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK! HONK!!!</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/diaries/inside-boxscore-team-134-game-7#commentsboxscoreDevin GardnerfootballGraham GlasgowIndianaJeremy GallonKyle BoschRaymon TaylorTaylor LewanSun, 20 Oct 2013 03:57:38 +0000ST382307 at http://mgoblog.comNew Indiana football helmethttp://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/new-indiana-football-helmet
<p>This recent tweet by Land-Grant Holy Land purports to show a new IU football helmet. Could this be real? If so, wow.</p>
<p>As helmets go, those are outrageous. As candycanes go, those look delicious.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<div class="content clearfix">
<div class="permalink-header">
<a class="account-group js-account-group js-action-profile js-user-profile-link js-nav" data-user-id="522821720" href="https://twitter.com/Landgrant33"><span class="username js-action-profile-name">@<b>Landgrant33&nbsp;</b></span>Indiana football because sure: </a><a class="twitter-timeline-link" data-pre-embedded="true" dir="ltr" href="http://t.co/5FitelmCI2">pic.twitter.com/5FitelmCI2</a></div>
<div class="permalink-header">
<img alt="" rel="lightbox" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BL20tViCUAAM19W.png" /></div>
<div class="permalink-header">
&nbsp;</div>
<div class="permalink-header">
<em><strong>EDIT:</strong> These are, in fact, real and there are others shown <a href="http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2013/6/3/4392186/new-indiana-football-helmets"><strong>here</strong></a></em></div>
</div>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/new-indiana-football-helmet#commentsMGoBoardClowniformsfootballhelmet designIndianaIndiana footballMon, 03 Jun 2013 19:14:03 +0000FabFiver579049 at http://mgoblog.comBig Ten Tournament Seeding Scenarioshttp://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/big-ten-tournament-seeding-scenarios
<p>Since Indiana just lost to OSU tonight, I was wondering what the Big Ten Tournament seedings could be. This is the schedule for the remaining Big Ten conference games and the winners of each game in my completely subjective opinion:<br />
<br />
<strong>Wednesday 3/6</strong></p>
<p><em>Michigan</em> @ Purdue</p>
<p><em>Minnesota</em> @ Nebraska</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Thursday 3/7</strong></p>
<p>Wisconsin @ <em>Michigan State</em></p>
<p>Penn State @ <em>Northwestern</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Saturday 3/9</strong></p>
<p><em>Minnesota</em> @ Purdue</p>
<p>Nebraska @ <em>Iowa</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Sunday 3/10</strong></p>
<p>Indiana @ <em>Michigan</em></p>
<p>Northwestern @ <em>Michigan State</em></p>
<p>Illinois @ <em>Ohio State</em></p>
<p><em>Wisconsin</em> @ Penn State</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>This would result in a 4-way tie atop the conference between Indiana, Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State. <a href="http://www.bigten.org/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/111011aae.html">According to the tiebreaking procedures from last year&#39;s tournament</a>, the seeding would work out as follows:</p>
<table border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1">
<tbody>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
1. Indiana</td>
<td>
7. Iowa</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
2. OSU</td>
<td>
8. Illinois</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
3. Michigan</td>
<td>
9. Purdue</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
4. MSU</td>
<td>
10. Northwestern</td>
</tr>
<tr class="odd">
<td>
5. Wisconsin</td>
<td>
11. Nebraska</td>
</tr>
<tr class="even">
<td>
6. Minnesota</td>
<td>
12. Penn State</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a href="http://bigtennetworks.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/2013_big_ten_mens_tournament_bracket.pdf">Here is the 2013 Big Ten Tournament bracket</a>. In the scenario I described, Michigan would be playing the winner of Minnesota vs Nebraska. If I made a mistake, please correct me.</p>
<p>EDIT: Fixed. I think UM would be the 3 seed by virtue of losing the comparison to OSU against Wisconsin.</p>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/big-ten-tournament-seeding-scenarios#commentsMGoBoardbasketballBig Ten TournamentIndianaMichigan StateOhio StateSeedingwisconsinWed, 06 Mar 2013 04:44:24 +0000Stephen Hawking76636 at http://mgoblog.comB1G's Best Asst. Coach Recruiters (Rivals)http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/b1gs-best-asst-coach-recruiters-rivals
<p>Here&#39;s an interesting Rivals article (<a href="http://footballrecruiting.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1471519">link</a>). Highlights!</p>
<ul>
<li>
Obviously: OSU and Michigan have the best recruiters. You probably know all about Michigan&#39;s body of work, but OSU was admittedly impressive in Texas and Georgia. They secured the #1 Texan and took a 4 star running back wanted by Texas/Oregon. They also beat out &#39;Bama and Georgia for a 5 star Georgian linebacker.&nbsp;</li>
<li>
Also expected: Fred Jackson&#39;s recruiting prowess in Detroit is like Nick Saban and Lane Kiffin, but cleaner &nbsp;(This is almost not an exaggeration.)</li>
<li>
Greg Mattison&#39;s work all over the country gets mentioned. He&#39;s credited for securing Poggi from the Crimson Temptress, but you probably knew that already.&nbsp;</li>
<li>
I think Indiana&#39;s continued recruiting successes are the most noteworthy. They pulled a couple 4 star prospects from the Hoosier State--but also a 4 star out of Georgia. &nbsp;Indy raiding the SEC is pretty wild.</li>
<li>
Jerry Montgomery didn&#39;t make the list. These things probably vary by year, and I don&#39;t think it&#39;s a strong indication of anything in particular, but it&#39;s a relevant omission for Michigan fans.</li>
<li>
Frosting should come in two varieties: Chuck E. Cheese-style and the kind made with cream cheese. Also, all pie crusts should be made of graham crackers.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
<a name="more"></a>http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/b1gs-best-asst-coach-recruiters-rivals#commentsMGoBoard'Bama2013 recruitingAlabamaAssistant coachesB1GfootballFred JacksonfrostingGeorgiagraham crackersgreg mattisonHenry PoggihoosierIndianaJerry MontgomeryLane KiffinMike VrabelOhiooregonOSUpie crustsRecruitingrivalsSECTexasThe Crimson TemptressFri, 01 Mar 2013 03:07:19 +0000Caesar76496 at http://mgoblog.com